Selected Readings from The Portable Dorothy Parker

When it comes to expressing the pleasure and pain of being just a touch too smart to be happy, Dorothy Parker is still the champion. Along with Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table, she dominated American popular literature in the 1920s and 1930s. This collection of more than 30 short stories and poems is essential for any Parker fan and an excellent way for new listeners to make the acquaintance of one of the 20th century's most quotable authors.

The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930s

1936 was a great year for the movie industry - the financial setbacks of the Great Depression were subsiding, so theater attendance was up. Americans everywhere were watching the stars, and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's personal story wasn't a happy one. Born poor and widowed at 24, Mary Astor had spent years looking for stability when she met and wed Dr. Franklyn Thorpe.

Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud

This joint biography of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford follows Hollywood's most epic rivalry throughout their careers. They only worked together once, in the classic spine-chiller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and their violent hatred of each other as rival sisters was no act. In real life they fought over as many men as they did film roles.

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

This is an exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber, whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors captured the spirit of the 1920s.

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London

Judith Flanders, one of Britain's foremost social historians, explores the world portrayed so vividly in Dickens' novels, showing life on the streets of London in colorful, fascinating detail. From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved English novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities, and cruelties.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed.

The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women: A Social History

The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress, of palace intrigue and dramatic politics. But if you were a woman, it was also a time when death during childbirth was rife, when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education you could hope to receive was minimal at best. Yet the Tudor century was also dominated by powerful and dynamic women in a way that no era had been before.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect. It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it.

Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening. But never before have they been available in print. Now, in Theft by Finding, Sedaris brings us his favorite entries. From deeply poignant to laugh-out-loud funny, these selections reveal with new intimacy a man longtime fans only think they know.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together in one volume, with a new preface, two best sellers, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, by an "important humorist in the classic tradition" (The New York Times Book Review) who is "the natural successor to Dorothy Parker" (British Vogue). In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life - its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, she is always wickedly entertaining.

The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy

In The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over 200 original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past 100 years.

A Moveable Feast

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft.

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.

You Don't Look Your Age: And Other Fairy Tales

An astonishingly frank, funny, poignant audiobook for any woman who wishes she had someone who would say to her, "This happened to me; learn from my mistakes and my successes. Because you don't get smarter as you get older - you get braver."

Zelda Fitzgerald: The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess

Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

The year was 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses.

When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.

The Dorothy Parker Audio Collection

Author, poet, screenwriter, and outstanding member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker was known for her quick wit, keen observations, and remarkable insight into the human condition. Regarded as brilliant, but known to be an alcoholic and often depressed, Parker's work pushes all buttons at once: humor, anger, love, pity, and everything in between.

She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron

Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about his "third-person memoir": "I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends - Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington.

The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters

The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire. They were the Mitford sisters....

The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century

The wayward son of a revered Civil War general, Roland Molineux enjoyed good looks, status, and fortune - hardly the qualities of a prime suspect in a series of shocking, merciless cyanide killings. Molineux's subsequent indictment for murder led to two explosive trials and a sex-infused scandal that shocked the nation. Bringing to life Manhattan's Gilded Age, Schechter captures all the colors of the tumultuous legal proceedings.

Carolina says:"A Book Without an Accompanying Wiki Page Is Always A Treat"

Are You Anybody?: A Memoir

It's rare that an actor embodies even one memorable character over the arc of a career. Jeffrey Tambor has managed to create three, beginning with Hank "Hey Now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show, the series created by Garry Shandling, Jeffrey's first mentor in television. He went on to find two more show creators, Mitch Hurwitz of Arrested Development and Jill Soloway of Transparent, who shared a love of actors and taught him a lot about acting along the way.

The Crime of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation

On July 14th, 1966, Richard Franklin Speck swept through a quiet Chicago townhouse like a summer tornado and stabbed, strangled, and killed eight young nurses in a violent sexual rampage. By morning, only one nurse, Corazon Amurao, had miraculously survived, and her scream of terror was heard around the world. As the eight bodies were carried out of the small building, the coroner, who had seen the carnage up close, told a gathering crowd: "It is the crime of the century!"

Publisher's Summary

She was known for her outrageous one-liners, her ruthless theater criticism, her clever verses and bittersweet stories. But there was another side to Dorothy Parker, a private life set on a course of destruction. She suffered through two divorces, a string of painful affairs, a lifelong problem with alcohol, and several suicide attempts.

In this lively, absorbing biography, Marion Meade illuminates both the dark side of Parker and her days of wicked wittiness at the Algonquin Round Table and in Hollywood.

the writer did a great job of capturing the dry caustic wit of parker, and all that it cost her through the years of her life. sometimes this audio book was laugh-out loud hilarious, as the writer sprinkled the text with actual quotes from parker, and sometimes heartbreaking as her life fell apart again and again, only to be remade with style and courage and too much to drink.

the reader gives it a very sympathetic voice and at the end of the book her voice matched my emotion perfectly, which was satisfying.

i first loved parker&#180;s short stories, then her poetry, and now her biography. i wish audibles had many other biographies of writers from the 20th century. glad they have this one ! i highly recommend it.

In spite of Dorothy Parker's sad, tragic life, her point of view gives a cynical, humorous twist to all the tragedies she encounters. I've heard this book many times and I always enjoy it because of Dorothy's complexity (insanity?) and the people she knew: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gerald and Sara Murphy, and, of course, the Algonquin Round Table (Robert Benchley, Alexander Woolcutt, etc.). Dorothy's sarcastic quips are a quick relief from the heartbreaking choices she makes as a pre-feminist writer: hiding her Jewish background, selecting handsome (gay?) men that she emasculates, attempting suicide several times, embracing the fast life of NYC and Hollywood, naively supporting Communistic causes, and failing to complete a long-awaited book. However, Dorothy Parker's short stories and poetry are still relevant today, especially for feminists and literature lovers. Narration is fine, but a couple of phrases like "turn over the tape for side 2" can be jarring. I hope you enjoy this audiobook. I did and still do.

Good narration but at some basic mispronunciation even Ms. Parker would have blanched. Otherwise, the timbre suited the theme and the writing was interesting. Clearly the research for the book was in depth.

The author succeeds in creating empathy for Dorothy Parker, a very talented but very troubled woman. Her career spans four decades of American history, including the Jazz Age, the War Years and the McCarthy Era, and her life intersects with many other famous American authors. However, the narrator sounds rather bored and snobbish, and pauses often. Increasing the speed helped somewhat.

Witty, Clever, Fascinating, Funny, Intelligent, Complicated... I could go on and on - these are some of the things that Dorothy was - and all the things that this book isn't.
How does someone write so unemotionally and without any sympatico for her subject?
I was looking for more - I was sadly disappointed.

This biography of Dorothy Parker by Marion Meade is a wonderful work. Parker never wanted a biography written during her life or after her death in the first place and though there is an earlier bio, that one only follows Parkers life (which is interesting enough). Mead?s book combines Parker?s life with her literary output in great detail and is often as funny as the literary lady her herself. If you want to read a very good biography of one of the literary greats of American poetry and short story, look no further. Meade did a lot of research on especially the early and later years of Parker and is a kind of expert on Parkers work, she did the introduction of The Portable Dorothy Parker and also wrote Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin (three writers of the Jazz Age) and contributed to A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York, a wonderful photo book and a guide for all Parker fans.

Unfortunately the audio book doesn?t really live up to this. The reader has no feeling or instinct for the wit and irony of both Dorothy Parker and Marion Meade and reads so businesslike she could be reading the minutes of some boring board meeting. Second, nobody at Audible took the trouble to edit the original recording, so frequently the reading is interrupted by ?You have reached the end of this cassette (?!), please continue on the other side?. Very sloppy of Audible and very irritating during a 17 hour read of a marvellous biography.

So 5 stars for the book and 1 star for the recording. A poor job and a missed opportunity.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.